1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a communication system including two different types of communication devices having a wireless or radio communication function for radio communication with each other, and to those communication, devices of the communication system, and peripheral devices used in the communication system.
2. Description of Related Art
There is known a digital cordless telephone communication system having a facsimile function, which system generally includes a communication line connecting portion, a recording portion and a reading portion, which are integrally built in one housing body. The communication line connecting portion is connected to an external public communication line and is configured to transmit and receive communication sound signals and facsimile data, and the recording portion is configured to print or record, on a recording medium such as a sheet of paper, facsimile reception data (image data) received through the public communication line, while the reading portion is configured to read images on an original for facsimile transmission.
Recently, it has been proposed to separate a communication system into a device connected to the public communication line and a device having the recording and reading portion. Namely, there has been proposed a communication system including two separate devices consisting of a communication box having the communication line connecting portion, and an image processing device having the recording portion and reading portion.
In the communication system including the two separate devices described above, the facsimile reception data received by the communication box from the public communication line are transmitted to the image processing device through a network (e.g., wireless LAN), and the image processing device performs a recording operation on the recording medium according to the facsimile reception data received through the network. On the other hand, the facsimile transmission data representative of the images of the original read by the image processing device are transmitted to the communication box through the network, and the communication box performs an operation to transmit the facsimile transmission data to the public communication line.
Where the digital cordless telephone communication system having the facsimile function includes the separate communication box and image processing device as described above, the communication box requires a wireless LAN communication control portion for transmission and reception of facsimile data to and from the image processing device, in addition to a digital cordless communication control portion for transmission and reception of communication sound data between the communication line connecting portion and a child unit, but does not include the recording portion and reading portion, so that the communication box can be small-sized.
Accordingly, the user of the digital cordless telephone communication system can install the communication box in a relatively narrow space, and install the image processing device at a desired location remote from the communication box, leading to an increased degree of freedom of installation of the communication box and image processing device.